Firefighters called to flames near gas compression site
CLAY TWP — No one was injured and no safety threat was posed by a Wednesday morning fire at a natural gas compression station, authorities said.
The fire, which started around 4:45 a.m. at the Stonehenge Appalachia facility, known as the Renick Compressor Station, was confined to a pair of plastic-type storage sheds.
“There was no risk to the main components of the compressor station,” said Nathan Wulff, chief of the Unionville Volunteer Fire Department.
Along with fire crews, Butler County Hazardous Materials Team 100 responded.
“The team is called out every time there's a well incident,” said Scott Hoffman, a hazardous materials specialist for Butler County Emergency Services and chief of Team 100.
It was subsequently determined, Hoffman noted, that the fire caused no health or safety risk.
Emergency crews at first were dispatched to the Penn Energy well pad on Rider Church Road in Center Township after a motorist on Route 308 believed that was the site of the fire.
But once there, Wulff could see the fire was actually at the compressor station on nearby Byers Road,
“I could see across the hill there was a fairly large amount of fire,” he said. “It was a pretty big flame.”
Not knowing what they would find, crews set up a staging area at Renick's Tree Farm on Route 308. West Sunbury and Prospect firefighters joined in the call.
There were no employees at the site, but dispatchers contacted company officials, who responded.
“The storage sheds were pretty much burned up (by the time fire crews got into the facility),” Wulff said.
Dry chemical extinguishers and water were used to put out the blaze. The sheds, each estimated to be about 8-feet-by-8-feet, were isolated from the rest of the facility's operation.
“They were against an outside fence,” Hoffman said. “They were not even near the compressor station.”
The sheds, he noted, contained so-called “pipeline pigs,” or foam swabs used to clean out particles and fluids from the inside of pipes.
A cause of the fire was not immediately known.
Stonehenge Appalachia is a subsidiary of Stonehenge Energy Resources, a Colorado-based company that provides engineering and other services to oil and gas producers.
A telephone call to the company was not returned.
A compressor station helps transport natural gas from one location to another. The facility pressurizes gas to move it through the pipeline.
Technology at the station allows for the removal of moisture and debris from the gas.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as the natural gas is compressed by powerful engines or turbines, the heat generated by the process must be vented and the natural gas stream cooled before re-entering the mainline system.
